Multiscale interdependence between economic policy uncertainty and industrial production of Central and Eastern European countries

Abstract

Abstract This paper shows how the three economic policy uncertainties (EPUs), namely global economic uncertainty, US economic policy uncertainty and German economic policy uncertainty, impact the industrial production of 8 Central and Eastern European countries. The investigation is done in both time and frequency domains, using the wavelet coherence and wavelet correlation approaches. The US EPU has the strongest effect on all industrial productions, while this effect was recorded during the global financial crisis and the corona virus pandemic. The most intense effect was found in the time-horizon between 4 and 8 months. The Czech Republic and Hungary suffer the strongest impact from EPU, probably because these two economies have relatively high ratio of export (import) vis-à-vis GDP. We fail to find very strong and wide areas of coherence in the Slovakian plot, although Slovakia has the highest level of export (import) to GDP. However, the wavelet correlation findings indicate that Slovakia has relatively high negative correlation at third wavelet scale, which is perfectly in compliance with its high export (import) share in GDP.